#10 - Anything That Moves - The My Lai Massacre (w/History on Fire)
Release Date: 03/08/2018
#16 – God’s Socialist, pt. 6: No Driver At The Wheel
The Martyrmade Podcast
This was originally intended to be part of the previous episode, but I decided to break them up.
#15 – God’s Socialist, pt. 5: The Wounded King
The Martyrmade Podcast
This episode begins where the ’60s end, when the radicalism of that decade crash headlong into the diminishing expectations of 1970s America. The Weather Underground veers off toward its explosive climax. As the idealism of the student movement is shunted into self-help fads and therapy sessions, what remaining energy of the radical left is drained into increasingly bizarre and violent channels.
#14 - God's Socialist, pt. 4: Sex, Drugs & Revolution
The Martyrmade Podcast
#13 – God’s Socialist, pt. 3: Head North, Then Turn Left
The Martyrmade Podcast
#12 - God's Socialist, pt. 2: What Child Is This?
The Martyrmade Podcast
#11 - God's Socialist: Prologue
The Martyrmade Podcast
This is the first episode of a series exploring Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. This episode is only a prologue, a few stories and ideas to serve as a backdrop for everything to come. The next episode will be along in the next few weeks, and every few weeks after that until we figure out why over 900 people committed suicide in a South American jungle in 1978.
#10 - Anything That Moves - The My Lai Massacre (w/History on Fire)
The Martyrmade Podcast
info_outline
#9 – Sacrifice & Oppression at the Dawn of Tyranny
The Martyrmade Podcast
“Mexica ‘beliefs’ have been discussed confidently enough, but academics being natural theologians, usually at an unnaturally abstract pitch. My interest is not in belief at this formal level, but in sensibility: the emotional, moral, and aesthetic nexus through which thought comes to be expressed in action, and so made public, visible, and accessible to our observation.”
#8 - How to Serve Man - Sacrifice & Cannibalism, pt. 1
The Martyrmade Podcast
Who’s hungry?
#7 - Approaching the Aztecs - A Drunken Introduction
The Martyrmade Podcast
In which I take a break from banging out my human sacrifice episode to check in with my patient listeners.
This is part 2 of a series I’ve been working on with Daniele Bolelli. In part 1, he covered the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre carried out by the US Army. I was working on my next major series when Daniele asked me to do a companion episode on My Lai, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. From his description:
“Because I felt like I was ordered to do it, and it seemed like that, at the time I felt like I was doing the right thing.” —Private First Class Paul Meadlo explaining his role in the My Lai Massacre.
“How do you shoot babies?” Meadlo was then asked. His reply… “I don’t know. It’s just one of them things.”
“I felt then and I still do that I acted as I was directed, and I carried out the order that I was given and I do not feel wrong in doing so.” — Lieutenant William Calley Jr. addressing his own leadership during the action.
“Every Day/ On our fellow man we prey/ Dog eat Dog/ To Get by/ Hope you like my genocide” — The Offspring
“Hello darkness, my old friend…” — Simon and Garfunkel
“I believe now it is but the commencement of war with this tribe, which must result in their extermination.” — Major Jacob Downing
“Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! … I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians. … Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.” — Quote attributed to Colonel John Chivington
“They were so honorable and so strong, but I felt like they were alone and sometimes when you want to do the right thing, the people that want to do the right thing suffer… even today.” —Lorraine Waters about Silas Soule and Joseph Cramer
“It was hard to see little children on their knees… having their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized.” — Silas Soule
I’m not going to lie. This is one of the darkest episodes of History on Fire. But there are reasons for this journey into the heart of darkness. The stories of Sand Creek and My Lai offer an opportunity to explore human agency, the choices separating good and evil, and how some individuals can choose to become sources of light even in the most horrible circumstances. In part B, I hand the microphone to my friend and master podcaster Darryl Cooper (from The Martyrmade Podcast.) Darryl explores the context of the Cold War in order to come to terms with what happened at My Lai, in Vietnam, in 1968. Horror abounds, but if you are looking for heroes in the midst of the horror, you can do a lot worse than hear about the story of Hugh Thompson.